The 13th WAMICON was held at the Hilton Cocoa Beach Oceanfront, 15-17 April 2012. Close to the NASA Kennedy Space Center is Cocoa Beach, part of the Florida High Tech Corridor, which covers the central Florida area and links three research universities, this is a nice location for the conference (not to mention the nice beaches and weather). Wamicon has connections in high places and was able to schedule the final Shuttle fly-over for the conference (if you believe that, I will sell you some swamp land in Arizona - but it did really fly by during the conference).
The two-day two-track technical sessions addressed up-to-date multidisciplinary research needs and interdisciplinary aspects of wireless and RF technology. The topics covered the areas of microwave and millimeter-wave circuits, passive components and antennas, power amplifiers, wireless sensors and sensor networks, and wireless communications. There were two special sessions focusing on RF and Microwave CAD and one special workshop on Load Pull techniques. More than two dozen exhibitors and sponsors in RF and microwave area displayed at the conference.
In addition to the two parallel sessions of technical presentations, there was a two-day tutorial session given by four invited speakers focusing on power amplifiers, software-defined radios, and RF MEMS. On Sunday afternoon, there was a seminar on recent advances in passive and active load pull by Maury Microwave. The plenary talk was given by Dr. John W. Palmour, CTO of Cree Inc.
Before the Awards Banquet on Monday evening, there was a poster session for both regular and student submissions. Another WAMICON tradition is to invite students to share their research experience with experienced people from academia, industry, and government in the poster format without the need to submit papers. This multi-purpose poster session, in particular, was met with great reviews from both students and experienced individuals alike since it provides for a unique opportunity for the two different generations to converse about research, work, and microwaves in general.
During the Awards Banquet, the winners of the best conference paper, the best student paper and the best student research presentation were awarded prizes donated by Cree Inc. The best conference paper was “DC-Coupled Doppler Radar Sensor with Software-Configured Fine-Tuning Architectures for Precise Monitoring of Complex Motion Patterns,” Yihong Yang, Changzhan Gu, Richard Gale and Changzhi L,i Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX and Jinghong, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX.
The best student paper was “Temperature and Voltage Impact on Intermodulation Distortion of Planar Barium Strontium Titanate Varactors,” Tony Price, Thomas Weller, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL and Ya Shen, Xun Gong, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL
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And the best student research presentation was “Tunable BST Inter-Digital Capacitors on Flexible LCP Substrate,” Ya Shen, Xun Gong, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL.
The Dr. Ruddy Henning Award was set up to recognize individuals that have demonstrated exemplary service by encouraging students and/or mentoring young engineers to advance careers in the areas of RF/microwave and/or wireless engineering. This year’s award went to Dr. Bumman Kim, Pohang University of Science and Technology who accepted via video.
See our complete photo gallery here.